


for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

by Skyworld



Series: Supernatural Season 14 Coda [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Coda, Drinking, Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, F/M, Introspection, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Post-Episode: s14e13 Lebanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 10:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18029822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyworld/pseuds/Skyworld
Summary: For him, it's embarrassing that he still regularly thinks about this strange dream from over a year ago. He still doesn't manage to fully understand how his brain fabricated this (for John Winchester's standards, at least) almost utopian fantasy in his head while considering himself a realist - and his reality is grey, dark, dull, full of supernatural creatures and families torn apart. Using this dream, where his wife is alive, his sons are happy and his father supposedly never left him of his own will but was swept away by a demon and an unfortunate accident, as a safe space, a happy fantasy for when the days are their greyest and darkest - he struggles to justify this even in front of himself. - (Coda to 14x13 "Lebanon")





	for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, a warning: This is my first fic in the Supernatural fandom. I'm really insecure about writing english and a horrible perfectionist, too, and so never reached the level of confidence that allowed me to write fanfiction in english because I was, or still am, ashamed of my limited wording and my use of tenses and commas based on suspicion and hope. I'm now trying to put myself out of my (admittedly very small) comfort zone as a test and first step for improvement - I cannot get better without doing something for it, can't I? :D  
> So, I hope you like this... whatever this is, I guess there are a lot of codas out there doing this a lot better than I did. If not, please send me some constructive criticism. 
> 
> Sadly I don't really know anyone in the english fandom, so this is not beta'ed.
> 
> Other things I'd like to mention:  
> Self-explanatory: All the relationships are just mentioned by John and not shown explicitly.  
> And I made it a Destiel fic because I ship them really hard and I see Dean and Cas together whichever way I look at them, I cannot unsee it. John's irritation about it is just how I imagine he would voice it. Idk, I don't think it's too harsh...  
> The title comes from "Father and son" by Cat Stevens.

He never forgot the dream, but he hadn't told anyone about it since (not that he had someone who he could talk to right now, John and Dean hunted separately at the moment and Bobby and him weren't exactly on speaking terms). Even though life was difficult and on some days he felt like all hope was lost and everything he'd done seemed like it was for nothing and that he would never avenge Mary, the weird but good dream somehow stayed ingrained in John's memory with all strange but wonderful details and made him feel the littlest spark of hope in the coldest, loneliest nights when he couldn't sleep. 

Sighing, John got out of the bed of the current run-down motel of the week and stashed his fantasy away in the furthest corners of his mind. Enough. Time to return to reality. There were monsters to track and people to save. He had no time for dreams. He should rather continue his research.

 

Several days and lengthy investigations later John wrapped up the wraith case and left behind two families who had lost beloved family members, who would never see their loved ones again. He felt guilty about leaving them, knowing that they would never know the truth about what had happened to them. He tried to put them off with lies - but those lies had holes in them that were so big that John expected them to blow up in his face sooner or later. So he skipped town as inconspicuous and quick as he managed to put some distance between himself and Brewster, Nebraska.  
Leaving the shattered remains of a family behind after a case always hit a little bit too close to home for him. He U-hauled his car after he drove past a Roadhouse, parked next to the run-down building and stumbled inside, all earlier thoughts of keeping his hands off the alcohol forgotten. Right now, he needed a good glass of scotch. 

John sat down on one of the barstools and ordered his drink. Just then he let his gaze wander around the room. It was just like any other of the countless Roadhouses he had had a drink in in the last years. Maybe this was not as much a secret monster hunter meeting point as Harvelle's Roadhouse, but it was not like John could ever go back there. Him showing his face there would not be appreciated. Ellen was quick with a gun and a very good shot and John wasn't eager to find out if she would shoot him a third nostril (he didn't doubt that she could do it). 

Several little tables in the room, three of them occupied, four booths on the far-end wall of which one was currently occupied, but the group consisting of two girls and boys approximately in their mid-twenties were crowding the one pool table in the room's middle. John also spotted a darts game on the wall next to the entry. The heavy wooden bar was illuminated by hanging metal lamps with faded Margiekugel logos on it who illuminated the bar in faint orange light. The shelf behind the bar itself was well-stocked, alcohol-wise and cluttered with stuff like ugly little figurines, license plates, yellowed photos and half-burnt candles crammed in the bottlenecks of empty wine bottles, coated in the waxy remains of old molten candles.  
The bartender was a middle-aged guy with thin hair who chatted animatedly with two men on the other side of the bar he apparently knew even while handing John his drink.  
Their talking and the music coming from the jukebox in the corner faded to hushed background noise and for the first time in several days, John let himself relax.

Sipping on his scotch, his gaze wandering over the beer-stained wooden surface of the bar, his thoughts once again wandered to the future. Which meant he thought about the dream again.

John didn't like it, but he had to grudgingly admit that having something positive he could dream of helped him getting through the day, even if it was as nuts as time travel, God's relatives, angels and secret underground bunkers.  
Somehow, it made dragging first both of his sons and now Dean alone through the life more bearable, like an assurance that somehow, somewhere in the far, far future his boys would turn out okay even if not in the way John always imagined. Happy. With a family even. 

But it still was just a dream, John reminded himself forcefully on days after he let himself indulge in this particular fantasy and a bottle of Hunter's Helper a little too much. Days like this one. All of this was born of his desperation to justify his never ending quest for revenge in front of himself and his boys. To make sense of what his life has become. To give his struggles at least a little bit of meaning and an ending that, if looked at by daylight, seemed like a happy ending that felt so ridiculously forced that John felt a little embarrassed. 

Time travel.  
A secret underground bunker.  
His father being a part of a secret organization fighting the supernatural who built said secret underground bunker.  
God's sister resurrecting Mary  
Mary, a hunter.  
An angel living with Sam and Dean, the three of them raising the son of Lucifer together.

He was clueless as how his brain managed to fabricate this absurd bullshit. Apparently the wish seemed to be the father to his thoughts, or in this case, dream. Sammy was out of the life and he had a girlfriend he had moved into an apartment with just a couple of months back. The dream versions of Sam and Dean told him that she’d died the same way Mary had died, resulting in Sammy getting back into the life. Who knows, maybe it was still a touchy subject for Dream-Sam even after sixteen years? They were his sons after all... 

 

For what it was worth, this girlfriend seemed to be a serious thing for Sammy and John knew from countless disputes and shouting matches preluding his departure to Stanford that Sam would never return to the life voluntarily or stay in it after they accomplished their mission to kill Yellow Eyes. And if it were up to John, it never would come to this. Never mind if Sam was still not speaking with John, he should never live through what John had lived through. He didn't deserve to lose his love in such a horrible, cruel way. This dream was just a manifestation of John's regret of Sammy leaving the way he did, nothing more. It had to be. 

Because John had to admit that Sammy had found something there in Palo Alto that meant something to him and Sam would definitely not take kindly to his father and brother trying to reel him back into chopping monsters heads off, shady ways of earning money and having an ambivalent relationship with society and police. John was not about to find out if there was another step-up after Sam shouting _You ruined my life! I hate you!_ at John. 

Dean staying in the life and sharing it with someone who knew and experienced the dangers of hunting - he could get behind that. But how his subconscious made Dean gay for an angel of the Lord of all things puzzled John completely, even if John wished for nothing more that someday his oldest would find someone special he could settle down with after Yellow Eyes was dealt with.  
Weird. And one of the most compelling arguments that all this was just a figment of his alcohol-infested brain.

He refused to think about Mary.

Maybe he _should_ lay off the alcohol a little bit, he thought, but he discarded the idea just as quick as it had come to his mind. _The damage is already done, I guess._ John scoffed.  
Seriously, if he spoke a word of this to anyone, like ever, he would be declared dependent on mind-altering substances or worse.

Sighing internally, he signaled the bartender for another drink.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I had planned for it to go on a little bit longer, with John asking Missouri if she knew about Mary being a hunter and him starting to go after little details he remembers which help him in his search for Yellow Eyes to prevent Sam from losing Jess like John lost Mary and then it would have ended with Dean calling about Jess's death anyway - but I couldn't get their voices right and my perfectionism reared it's head again and I got frustrated. So it's baby steps for now.  
> Maybe I'll come back later...


End file.
